Linea and her motley group had arrived in Evidis in the early morning. Linea was too tired to deal with Senia further even though she had decided to talk with her before they would depart in the evening. As expected, she slept rather troubled, and nightmare of another assassination attempt woke her up.

“Stupid dreams…” she murmured and looked around to check if the room, she resided in, was empty. She realized, this was not the case. On a couch on the side of the room, Tenasia slept soundly.

Linea smiled. Her old, trusty maid was something like a second mother to her. Or more like an aunt. Linea found it difficult to describe their relationship, because Tenasia was her servant, but despite that Linea held her in high regards. Tenasia had always been there for her since she was a child. In fact, Linea had more fond memories of her maid than her own mother, who used to be away for weeks on end.

‘The worst thing about being part of your body is this sleeping thing,’ Sarah interrupted sounding rather grumpy.

‘What sleeping thing?’ Linea asked confused.

‘Well, when you sleep, I sleep. When you wake up, I wake up,’ Sarah explained. ‘It’s kind of strange not being in control of that. I’m just happy that I seem to have no problem adopting your nocturnal living style because of that.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry for waking you…’ Linea said crestfallen.

‘It’s okay, I didn’t mean it as a reproach,’ Sarah reassured her. ‘I just shared my observations. Did you have a nightmare?’

‘Yes, but no need to talk about that,’ Linea sighed.

‘All right, fine by me,’ Sarah answered. ‘But if you need to talk about it… Nora will always be there for you.’

Linea rolled her eyes.

Her gaze wandered through the windows of her room and the last sunrays made their way over the horizon. She decided that it wouldn’t be useful to sleep any longer. She got up and woke up Tenasia. Thinking about how to approach Senia, she went with breakfast. She asked Tenasia to bring bread and some Tula, a special honey made by the Tula firefly. It wasn’t as sweet as normal honey but energizing to Moon Elves.

She made her way to Senia’s chamber, when Tenasia returned with Minara and the breakfast. Tenasia had also added some Famnir, which she had acquired from the household of the Countess Thudila.

Linea knocked on the door and after a few moments a tired ‘Come in!’ sounded from within.

Senia still laid in her bed and looked exhausted. Linea felt bad for waking her up, but she was sure the breakfast with the Famnir would help to smooth things out.

“Is that Famnir what I smell?” Senia instantly asked.

“Yes, sister,” Linea answered and motioned her maids to put the foot down on Senia nightstand. “I hoped we could start our little discussion with a nice breakfast.”

Senia’s face darkened, but she didn’t stop Linea either.

“You may leave now,” Linea said to Tenasia and Minara, who both made a curtsy and left.

In silence the sisters took a slice of bread and a strange looking stick with a fluted ball on the end. With that stick they transported the Tula from the bowl on the bread. They each took a bite and moaned simultaneously in delight.

“So, are you going to tell me, why you’re following me?” Linea got straight to the point after they had eaten enough. “I mean, it can’t be the concern for my well-being, can it?”

Senia avoided Linea’s gaze.

“I... It was my duty,” she said, but Linea knew instinctively that this wasn't all. She herself may have said the same, but her reasoning to go after the dark mage was rather convoluted.

“Which duty?” Linea asked.

“As a Void Hunter,” Senia answered and looked at Linea with a frown. “The Academy accepted me. Not you. I was deemed able to fight the Torra. Not you. I’m the one to lead the Hunters in the future. Not you!”

The final part sounded agitated and Senia was breathing heavily.

“That’s true,” Linea admitted. “And I won’t take that from you. It’s your vocation. I have watched your training from time to time. I was envious, if I’m being honest, but I saw how much you like it.”

She stopped and looked outside where the sun had now surrendered to the night completely.

“Of course, you would be jealous,” Senia said with a triumphant smile. “I have what you always wanted. And I’m good at it. That’s why you went and got yourself blessed. Just to outdo me again.”

“I’m not jealous, Senia!” Linea answered annoyed. “I’m envious.”

“What’s the difference?” Senia answered and rolled her eyes.

“The difference is that I’m happy for you!” Linea said, and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m proud of you, and what you have achieved. I always saw you as someone to chase after, someone to look up to. Someone I wanted to be like. You’re dedicated and sure of yourself.”

Senia looked surprised.

“You’re proud of me?”

“Of course! I’m sorry if I didn't show it as much after the examination, but I was devastated when they told me I would never be a Void Huntress,” Linea explained, and she tried hard not to cry.

Senia seemed to process this while Linea drank her Famnir to calm herself down.

“But that’s a thing of the past now,” Linea said bringing that part of the discussion to an end. “More importantly, I will have to fight a dark mage soon. The goddess gave me special powers to fight such a threat, and I will answer our people’s call for help. That is my divine duty. If you want to be angry at me because of that, I won’t try any further to stop you.”

She stood up and walked towards the door. She turned around for a moment.

“You are my sister, Senia,” she said with a pained smile. “As such, I will always love you. But if you want to be angry and mean to me, I will stop bothering myself with you. I have more important things to worry about from here on. I hope you can overcome your anger, and that we can start over again someday.”

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The next week of their ride towards Taldira was rather uneventful although a bit awkward. Senia and Linea didn’t talk at all, but Linea had meant what she had said. She would give her sister anymore thoughts if she was to be angry.

To their surprise, the Baroness Saliara had decided to follow Linea into battle against the dark mage and had even taken more of her men from her barony with her. Her force consisted now of Lady Knight Talura and twenty normal knights. Twenty-one, if one would count Fenandir as well. Together with Aruna as a priestess, Evira and her guardsmen, the group was now forty men and women strong.

 But Linea had other things on her mind. She still had her nightmares even though they had slight changes every time. Sometimes the killer would be her mother, sometimes it would be even a Torra. It made her grumpy over the course of the ride and when she and Aruna were in one of her healing lessons, she finally snapped.

“I know! I know!” she cried out. “I get it! I get the concept! The power comes from the goddess and your mind must be tranquil to call upon her. I just can’t clear my mind enough!”

“The meditation didn’t work, I guess?” Aruna asked not getting provoked by Linea’s outburst.

“No, it did not,” Linea answered still enraged. “And I don’t know how you are supposed to clear your mind from your sorrows and fears. It’s a part of what we are. I can’t simply turn that off!”

“You’re not supposed to throw them away,” Aruna tried to explain. “It’s more like coming to terms with things. If you can accept them, you will see the world in a new light. It grants you enlightenment over yourself. When my father threw me out of my family, I was devastated. If it hadn’t been for your sister and her letter of introduction to High Priestess Nasinia, I probably would work in a brothel now, or something. It took me years to come to terms with what had happened and what I had lost. But after I accepted everything, I moved on.”

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Linea had calmed down a bit while Aruna was talking.

‘I know what she is talking about,’ Sarah mumbled.

‘You do?’ Linea asked surprised.

‘Yes, I can try to show you something from my memories. Perhaps it helps you understand the concept of accepting your fate. But for that we need a quiet place and a bit of time.’

When they stopped at midnight in a small village, Linea explained that she wanted to meditate and decide that the local shrine for Luna near the village would be a good choice. The shrine consisted only of a small statue of the goddess in a small chapel. She sat down in front of the statue and closed her eyes.

‘Okay, how does this work?’ Linea asked.

‘Just wait a bit. I need to use psionics to draw your mind into the memory I have prepared. I’ve played with mind psionics since Luna mentioned I should have the ability to learn it. This is one of the things I came up with. Let’s hope it works as intended.’

Linea didn’t have to wait long. Her mind suddenly found itself in an unknown location. There were trees around her and she was running. She was a little confused about it, but Sarah’s voice suddenly explained.

‘We’re in my past self, just like I’m inside you. I didn’t find a better way to show it to you.’

‘But your past self doesn’t know we’re here?’

‘Of course not,’ Sarah replied with a laugh. ‘It’s just a memory after all.’

‘All right, where are we here?’ Linea asked, while Sarah’s past self still ran and turned around occasionally. It was in the middle of the night and Linea noticed that humans were terrible at seeing in the night. She could barely make out anything besides some dancing lights behind them.

‘Somewhere south of Scranton, if I recall correctly,’ Sarah said. ‘But that won’t mean anything to you. Let’s just say it was shortly after they killed my parents. I was fourteen at that point and all alone. I was running from people, who tried to put me back into the camp. Or even worse. I just told myself I wouldn’t let them get me. I had been running for days and had only slept for two hours at a time, and I was hungry, tired and afraid.’

Sarah sighed mentally.

‘I will synchronize us with the memory now.’

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Sarah’s feet hurt.

She had lost one of her shoes when she had hauled herself over a large fence with telekinesis. Because of her chasers, she couldn’t turn back to get it. Instead she had to throw away the other one as well as the height difference of the shoe made running uncomfortable.

A mistake as she now realized. The soles of her feet bleed slightly as she ran through the woods. She was exhausted and hungry. It was dark, and she saw see the flashlights behind her searching for her.

Suddenly a voice amplified by a megaphone sounded through the forest.

“Miss Johnson,” a man yelled. “Please, surrender yourself. We don’t mean you harm, but law dictates that you must be taken into custody. Don’t make this harder on everyone.”

Sarah stopped in her tracks as she realized that the voice was in front of her. She could probably slip by again with her shadow walk, but it would deplete her power even more. And she was already running low on that. Constant running and no time to rest was counterproductive for her powers.

She thought hard about her next steps, but she hadn’t much time as her pursuers closed in fast. Her options were limited. Stay and fight hoping to get rid of everyone following her, which would cause the government to lose her trail, or keep running. But Sarah had killed no one yet, and she was hesitant to do it.

But on the other hand, she couldn’t keep going like that. Tears ran down her face as she remembered the last words of her mother. Be strong, she had said. But what did it mean to be strong?

Sarah walked closer to the group ahead. She used her shadow walk for short amounts of times to get closer without being noticed. She waited for the men, who advanced from behind. When they were close enough, she raised her hands and walked into the spotlight of a Humvee, which stood on a small road.

Eight soldiers instantly raised their guns and pointed them at her. Behind her another six came into sight and did the same.

“I see, you are reasonable,” a man in a black suit said. Sarah recognized his voice from the megaphone speech earlier. Her eyes wandered to one of the soldiers, who had a combat knife strapped to his left leg.

“I would just like to know, why do you want to catch me?” She asked and tried to buy time. Carefully she unsheathed the knife with her telekinesis and let it float behind the soldier.

“Because the law states that every meta-human must stay inside the camps. You know that. You were raised there.”

“That’s true,” she admitted. “But have I ever done to anyone to be imprisoned like that?”

“Your powers are dangerous,” the man explained. “To yourself and others. It’s important that you’re supervised.”

“Supervised?” Sarah asked, and she had to suppress her anger. “Do you believe the bullshit you’re talking about?”

“It’s how it is,” the man said unimpressed. “It’s law, and that’s how we deal with it. Will you come with us, or do we have to use force?”

“I’ll go with force,” Sarah answered and plunged the knife into the neck of the soldier. The man gurgled blood as the blade severed his windpipe. The other soldiers didn’t hesitate and fired their weapons. Sarah hastily erected a telekinetic barrier which brought the bullets to a hold. She didn’t know, if she could pull that stunt, but the bullets didn’t take as much power to stop as she had expected.

Multiple clicking sounds around her indicated that the weapons had ran out of ammunition.

“My turn,” she said and pushed the bullets still hanging in the air towards her enemies. She wasn’t strong enough to accelerate the projectiles as fast as a gun, but it was enough to wound everyone around her. Screams of pain echoed through the forest, and all the soldiers lay on the ground incapacitated. The man in the black suit panicked as he realized that he had taken on someone, who was not to be trifled with. He fumbled as he tried to pull a handgun from his holster. Before he got a grip on his gun however, Sarah had taken control of the knife again and slipped through the shadows behind the man.

“You’re not very good at overseeing people, aren’t you?” She mocked him and rammed the knife into his lower abdomen. “Didn’t even see me coming…”

The man tried to turn around with his gun in hand, but the knife in his back caused him too much pain. He dropped to the ground. Sarah grabbed his gun with her telekinesis.

“All I ever wanted was to be a normal girl. Having friends, going to school, falling in love, getting married, having kids…” she said with a sad voice. “But you narrow minded humans just wouldn’t let me. And now you made me a killer. Are you proud about that?”

The man didn’t answer with words, but simply whimpered.

“Tell me! Are you proud, you fucking asshole?” She screamed and pulled the trigger while she aimed at his head. A small click was everything that happened.

“Useless thing!” Sarah yelled and looked at the gun. The safety was still on. She pulled the switch to make the pistol ready.

She aimed again at the man, who had peed himself and had fallen unconscious. This time the shot echoed through the woods and the man’s brain splattered across the ground.

“Oh, fuck!” Sarah said when the brain matter even splashed on her bare feet. Bile rose in her throat and she turned around. She didn’t puke much, because she hadn’t eaten in a while, but it wasn’t pleasant either.

“This weapon is disgusting…” she noted. For the others she would use the knife to finish them.

A few minutes later, she had rounded up the soldiers that had tried to crawl away. Some begged for mercy, but Sarah couldn’t find any of that in her. Having seen her parents being killed in front of her and being hunted for days had deadened her inhibitions considerably. In fact, she realized leaving them alive would just bring the government back on her trail. It would buy her valuable time to disappear from their radar if she killed all of them.

When the last soldier was dead, Sarah started to cry as realized what she had done. She didn’t fall to the ground, but she stood there looking into the night sky and cried. She felt a mixture of relief and guilt, but also accomplishment and horror, over what she had done. What she had been forced to do.

It took her a few minutes to compose herself.

She took some time to take arm herself with one of the assault rifles and as much ammunition as she could carry. She also took the boots of one of the soldiers to replace her lost shoes, and even tried to drive the Humvee, but she didn’t have a clue on how to drive. After trying it for some time, she gave up and walked instead.

It would be a long walk and she didn’t know where she would end up. Her freedom was the only thing that mattered, and no one would ever take that away from her again.

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Linea opened her eyes again and looked at the statue of her goddess. A sight that calmed her down.

‘That was brutal,’ she stated to Sarah.

‘Yes,’ Sarah admitted. ‘But it was necessary. You had access to my feelings from back then.’

‘I felt your fear and anger,’ Linea admitted. ‘But how you killed them. If it weren't for your guilt, I would have thought you to be a heartless killer.’

‘It is what they portrayed me as later on. It was the first, but not my last encounter with humans, who thought they could kill me with simple guns.’

‘Regarding that,’ Linea said curious. ‘What were those weapons?’

‘Firearms,’ Sarah said. ‘The concept is a logical advancement from bow and arrow. You put force behind a projectile to accelerate it. I don’t know how deep your knowledge of physics is, but in simple terms one could say the more power you put behind the projectile the farther and faster it flies. With guns this power comes from a small, contained explosion, which drives the projectile through a barrel.’

‘Sounds awfully complicated,’ Linea admitted. ‘But I think I understand what you mean by principle. Crossbows are based on the same idea of putting more power behind it.’

‘It’s nice that you’re understanding it, because I don’t think if I can explain it better than that. I’m no scientist after all.’

‘It’s fine. It isn’t the main topic. What were you trying to show me with that?’

‘Multiple things,’ Sarah stated. ‘First, I hope you understand now, why I was so shocked by your inability to deal with a simple guy with a knife. I was as young as you are now when that happened. I was hunted, and those men wanted to kill me. Okay, I give it to them in retrospective that I started it by killing one of them, but they wanted to capture me, even though I had done nothing.’

‘I don’t judge you or it,’ Linea said.

‘Don’t worry. I don’t need to your assurance on that. I came to terms with it long ago,’ Sarah explained. ‘And that’s the second part. I know how conflicted you feel about your mother and our mission, but in the end, you just need to ask yourself one question: Will you be able to live with it?’

Linea thought about it for a moment, but Sarah kept going.

‘If you can’t then we should go back, and you should apologize to your mother.’

‘I can’t just go back,’ Linea said angry. ‘My mission is to protect our people from the dark mage. I can’t run away from my duty!’

‘Of course, you could!’ Sarah disagreed. ‘The question would just be again: Could you live with it?’

Linea halted in her thoughts when it dawned on her what Sarah tried to say.

‘No, I couldn’t look myself in the mirror again,’ Linea said. ‘And that’s why I have to accept it. It was my decision.’

‘Good, you’re reaching the right conclusions,’ Sarah said with a slight chuckle.

‘But what if I fail?’ Linea added.

‘You won’t. That’s what I’m here for,’ Sarah reassured her. ‘I’m your personal guardian spirit.’

‘Thank you, Sarah.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘But I have to mention it,’ Linea countered. ‘I don’t know, if I could have got through all this, if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘Well, to be fair, you wouldn’t be in this situation without me either.’

‘My point still stands!’ Linea said vigorously. ‘Could you just accept my thanks, Luna dammit!’

‘Linea, language!’ Sarah said with a laugh and fake indignation.